The Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing and How to Avoid Them -
While the marketing equivalents are not as serious as the original seven they are areas that, if not addressed, can lead you to marketing and sales disaster.
1. Lack of Self-Awareness
2. Perfectionism
3. Living in the Past
4. Failure to Quantify
5. Failure to Test
6. Inaction
7. Focusing on What Doesn’t Matter
1. Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing
Seven Deadly Sins of
Marketing and How to
Avoid Them
Christopher Ryan
info@fusionmarketingpartners.com
2. Winning B2B Marketing
The following is excerpted
from Christopher Ryan’s
new book “Winning B2B
Marketing: Proven
Methods that Drive
Revenue, Leads and
Awareness”
3. Seven Deadly Sins
While the marketing equivalents are
not as serious as the original seven
– lust, gluttony, greed,
sloth, wrath, envy, and pride –
they are areas that, if not addressed,
can lead you to marketing and sales
disaster.
4. Seven Deadly Marketing Sins
1. Lack of Self-Awareness
2. Perfectionism
3. Living in the Past
4. Failure to Quantify
5. Failure to Test
6. Inaction
7. Focusing on What Doesn’t Matter
Download the Free 7 Deadly Sins Book Chapter
5. Seven Deadly Marketing Sins
1. Lack of Self-Awareness:
• You need to know who you are as a marketing
professional as well as where you shine (or don’t)
as a company.
• To be truly self-aware you must be willing to take
a frank look at your weaknesses and strengths.
• On the company side, self-awareness means
acknowledging when your competitors are better
at certain things than you are (and vice versa).
– See our post on completing a SWOT Analysis.
Download the Free 7 Deadly Sins Book Chapter
6. Seven Deadly Marketing Sins
2. Perfectionism:
• In marketing and sales, the need to be perfect can
be counter productive.
– Perfectionism is time consuming and leads to inaction.
– Perfection is subjective.
– Perfection is elusive.
– Perfection creates havoc with your staff.
• Consistency and quantity of output are important
characteristics of productive marketing; a
needless (and fruitless) search for perfection can
be a detriment to your success.
Download the Free 7 Deadly Sins Book Chapter
7. Seven Deadly Marketing Sins
3. Living in the Past:
• A good marketer is a paranoid marketer – always
wondering what new techniques others are using
to gain competitive advantage.
• Prevent living in the past by being a watchful
consumer.
– Keep an eye out for how companies are marketing and
selling to you and emulate the best practices.
• Borrowing from good ideas is perfectly legitimate
as long as you do not copy another company’s
text or designs.
Download the Free 7 Deadly Sins Book Chapter
8. Seven Deadly Marketing Sins
4. Failure to Quantify:
• In marketing and sales, data is your friend.
• The days of measuring success by number of
creative awards won are over.
• You need hard data that shows
– How many people are seeing each promotion
– How many are responding
– How prospects are being moved through each stage of
the process to become customers
Download the Free 7 Deadly Sins Book Chapter
9. Seven Deadly Marketing Sins
5. Failure to Test:
• Marketers who do not test are marketers who
don’t get the best results.
– Every element of marketing campaigns can be tested,
including: target audience, offers, benefits, messaging,
media, copy, and graphics.
• I recommend devoting 5-10% of your finances to
new programs, offers, and audiences.
– Don’t set the same expectation for success with the
test budget as you do for the rest of your campaigns.
– Experiment, take chances, and roll the dice, in an
attempt to beat the control campaigns.
Download the Free 7 Deadly Sins Book Chapter
10. Seven Deadly Marketing Sins
6. Inaction:
• There is never a perfect time to enter a market,
launch a campaign, or execute a quick hit strategy.
– You won’t always have all the facts, or know how a
target audience will respond.
• Good marketers are aggressive marketers.
– You learn by doing, not just by studying, pondering, and
analyzing.
– It is sometimes necessary to forget ready-aim-fire and
instead practice ready-fire-aim.
Download the Free 7 Deadly Sins Book Chapter
11. Seven Deadly Marketing Sins
7. Focusing on What Doesn’t Matter:
• As a marketing manager, you have two primary
resources at your command: time and money.
– There is a great deal of money spent on programs and
activities that have little chance of success
– There is also a great deal of time spent on the
irrelevant and the counterproductive
• Every minute you spend on a nonproductive
activity hurts you in two ways:
– Wasted time on unhelpful items
– Lost time to spend on helpful items
Download the Free 7 Deadly Sins Book Chapter
12. Seven Deadly Marketing Sins
7. Focusing on What Doesn’t Matter:
• What doesn’t matter?
– How many direct reports you have
– How much your staff likes you
– How cool your website looks
– How big your trade show booth is
– How fast your budget grows
– What you did last year (or last quarter in fast-paced
industries)
– Time spent in endless and nonproductive meetings
Download the Free 7 Deadly Sins Book Chapter
13. Seven Deadly Marketing Sins
7. Focusing on What Doesn’t Matter:
• What does matter?
– More leads going to the sales force
– Hiring good people or outside contractors to assist you
– Reduction in wasteful spending
– Cross-selling and up-selling customers
– Changing to a process that improves funnel conversion
ratios
– Lowering your cost of customer acquisition
– Increasing revenue
Download the Free 7 Deadly Sins Book Chapter
14. Learn More
Learn More about the
Seven Deadly Marketing
Sins and How to Avoid
Them:
Download the Free Seven
Deadly Sins Chapter Now!
15. Free eBook!
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Chapter NOW!
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16. About Fusion Marketing Partners
Christopher Ryan, CEO
We Do This:
Brand building/messaging
Website optimization
Content creation
Lead generation
You Get This:
Much greater levels of awareness
Higher quantities of qualified leads
Ability to generate faster revenue
Lots more information at:
http://FusionMarketingPartners.com/
http://Greatb2BMarketing.com (blog)
info@fusionmarketingpartners.com
719-357-6280